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I don’t think I’ve ever seen coal burn, but you can find pieces of it along the abandoned railways and beaches in my area. We have a coal dock that’s been abandoned for 50 years and the ground is still black with coal dust
Edit: actually a scenic railroad in my area still has a coal fired steam locomotive so yes, I can say I’ve seen coal burn!
As a child, Easter holiday in a cottage in Cornwall. It had a coal fireplace.
A friend of mine bought a literal ton of coal for $75 to heat his pole barn in a wood burner that could also be used to burn coal. His chimney wasn't tall enough and wind would drag the smoke down to ground level as it passed over the gambrel roof. It was nasty. I believe later on I learned that coal from my region is of poor quality and gets sent overseas
I'd never really considered that people might not have seen coal burn.
In Ireland both coal and turf are still fairly common as the primary method of heating. That said they are "trying" to phase it out.
Isn’t the burning of bog utterly wrecking parts of your ecosystem? I’m really surprised youse are still doing it in this day an age.
Since we produce a lot of NG around here that's what we use for heating. But we always used electric clothes dryers...
Yeah, I grew up in a poor area in rural Ohio and we heated primary with coal until 2021.
Yes, in 1989.
East Perth to Midland train yards on the footplate of the Flying Scotsman.
The fireman was shovelling coal into the firebox, and it was one of the most concentrated sources of heat I have seen in my life.
Well yeah. It was how we heated our home when I was a kid growing up in England.
Same here
Here in New Zealand you can buy it at the Hardware store in 20KG bags. Older houses have pot belly "stoves" for heat, which are smaller then log burners usually, and coal is the best fuel for them.
Yep, I dabble in blacksmithing.
You get it going -smokey as shit at first-and it melts together into a lighter, more solid piece that burns hotter and cleaner. That's called coke.
Then you toss your irons in
Yes. Used to build and install coal boilers for hot water heating systems.
Yes. On a camping trip. At one end of the lake is the remains of an old WWII POW camp. There were at the time some small piles of coal. We took a couple of pieces and burned it in a camp fire. Only because I had never seen coal burn before.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/White-otter-Lake-lnJZ4ycdSKOAmJ2U4rZSIw?s=m
Yes. In a fire. Why?
I lived in wv, you find chunks of it out in the ground sometimes. I was a curious kid and tried to get some to light. It was real low quality though so it burnt like shit
Yep. When I was young, we had a stove in my house for heat that burnt coal or wood. We mostly burnt coal in it.
In a steam locomotive, but a scale model one that was ridden on instead of in. It was actually pretty cool; they still hand-stoked the firebox and everything, just... really small.
I rode one of those but it must have been gas or diesel.
What's the difference?
Coal is mined out of the ground.
Charcoal is wood that has been super heated to remove the water.
Charcoal is wood that has been heated above combustion temperature without oxygen. That does drive off water, but it also chemically decomposes the lignin and other organics into primarily carbon while creating a volatile mixture of gasses known as woodgas.
Source: Have a woodgas generator. Byproduct is charcoal.
One you can mine from the ground.
The other you get by smelting oak logs in a furnace
You can also get the former by killing wither skeletons, making it a renewable resource.
Coal stoves are still sometimes the principal source of heat for rural houses in Eastern Europe. They are slowly being phased out though.
There are apparently a few people here and there who still use it. I remember reading some article about a guy in the US who preferred it.
googles
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/03/699325560/for-the-few-who-heat-homes-with-coal-its-still-king
Every few weeks, John Ord does something unusual for most people living in 2019 — he stops by a local hardware store in rural northeastern Pennsylvania to buy coal to heat his home.
Ord's coal-burning stove burns 24 hours a day when it's cold. He likes the constant heat it gives off and says it's cheaper than his other options — oil and electric.
Rode in an old steam train that has a boiler fueled by coal. Got to see the furnace* that heated the boiler have some fresh coal shoveled in before we went for a short ride.
*I don't remember if it is called a furnace on a train, it was a few decades ago and I'm too lazy to look it up.
If my son’s 9000 train-related books are to be trusted, I think it’s called a “firebox”.
Yes. Am Welsh. Coal fires are still pretty common in the South Wales valleys. My Grandfather still gets free coal deliveries every other month due to his time working in the pits.
As in part off his pension is free coal for life?
Could ever have a lump sum or coal for life, he picked the coal as the cash payout was around £5000, which would cover the coal cost for about 3 years at the time. He's been having that for over 30 years at this point, pretty good deal!
What if he picked the lump sum and received a giant lump of coal worth £5000
Omg they're not phasing it out? jfc
Yep. Grew up in a house with a wood stove as the only source of heat, and my parents would occasionally use some coal in it. Dad also had a coal forge for hobby blacksmithing.
No, but this topic sent me down a rabbit hole briefly.
You may have heard of the Marshall Fire in Boulder, Colorado that burned 1000 homes and killed two people within the city in 2021.
In the area of the point of ignition of this wildfire, an underground coal fire has been known to be burning for the past 150 years. As far as I know they still haven't ruled it out as a possible cause.
They didn't start the fire, it was always burning 🎶
The fact that the city decided to build over that is nuts.
It was the opposite of a flood plain, but the land was just as cheap!
Yes, I have coal furnace + boiler as a central heating installation.
Worked at a coal mine. The dust can be very flammable.
Yes. Grew up in a house without central heating. Learned to build up and maintain fire in an oven as a kid.
Yes. Steam train
